"Hamilton, Laurell K - Narcissus In Chains (Chapter 1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

Narcissus In Chains


by
Laurell K. Hamilton



Chapter 1

June had come in like it's usually hot, sweaty self, but a freak cold front had moved in during the night. The car radio had been full of the record low temperatures. It was only low sixties, not that cold, but after weeks of eighty, and ninety plus, it felt down right frigid. My best friend, Ronnie Sims, and I were sitting in my Jeep with the windows down letting the unseasonably cool air drift in on us. Ronnie had turned thirty tonight. We were talking about how she felt about the big 3-0, and other girl talk. Considering that she's a private detective and I raise the dead for a living it was pretty ordinary talk. Sex, guys, turning thirty, vampires, werewolves. You know, the usual.

We could have gone inside the house but there is something about the intimacy of a car after dark that makes you want to linger. Or maybe it was the sweet smell of spring like air coming through the windows like the caress of some half-remembered lover.

"Okay, so he's a werewolf. No one's perfect," Ronnie said. "Date him, sleep with him, marry him. My votes for Richard."

"I know you don't like Jean-Claude."

"Don't like him!" Her hands gripped the passenger side door handle squeezing it until I would see the tension in her shoulders. I think she was counting to ten.

"If I killed as easily as you do I'd have killed that son of a bitch two years ago and your life would be a lot less complicated now."

That last was an understatement. But . . . "I don't want him dead, Ronnie."

"He's a vampire Anita. He is dead." She had turned and looked at me in the dark. Her soft grey eyes and yellow hair had turned to silver and near white by the cold light of the stars. The shadows and bright reflected light left her face in bold relief like some modern painting. But the look on her face was almost frightening. There was a fearful determination there.

If it had been me with that look on my face, I'd have warned me not to do anything stupid, like kill Jean-Claude. But Ronnie wasn't a shooter. She'd killed twice both times to save my life. I owed her, but she wasn't a person who could hunt someone down in cold blood and kill them. Not even a vampire. I knew this about her, so I didn't have to caution her. "I used to think I knew what dead was, or wasn't, Ronnie." I shook my head. "The line isn't so clear cut."

"He seduced you," she said.

I looked away from her angry face. Staring at the foil wrapped swan in my lap. Deirdorfs and Hart where we'd had dinner got creative on their doggy bags; foil wrapped animals. I couldn't argue with Ronnie and was getting tired of trying.

Finally, I said, "Every lover seduces you, Ronnie, that's the way it works."

She slammed her hands so hard into the dash board it startled me and must have hurt her hands. "Dammit, Anita, it's not the same."

I was starting to get angry and I didn't want to be angry, not with Ronnie. I had taken her out to dinner to make her feel better, not to fight. Her steady boyfriend Louis Fannon was out of town at a conference, and she was bummed about that, and turning thirty. So I'd tried to make her feel better and she seemed determined to make me feel worse.

"Look, I haven't seen either Jean-Claude or Richard for six months. I'm not dating either of them so we can skip the lecture on vampire ethics."

"Now that's an oxymoron," she said.

"What is?" I asked.

"Vampire ethics," she said.

I frowned at her. "That's not fair, Ronnie."

"You are a vampire executioner, Anita. You are the one who taught me that they aren't just people with fangs. They are monsters."